Challenging Christian Quotes

These inspirational and challenging Christian quotes are extracted from books and sermons by godly believers that we hope will challenge and encourage you as you run this race for the Lord Jesus. (For sharing the quotes that are in the image format, you can download them by clicking the download arrow that is on the image.)

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Spiritual pride takes great notice of opposition and injuries that are received, and is often speaking of them. Humility disposes a person rather to be, like his blessed Lord when reviled, dumb, not opening his mouth. The more clamorous and furious the world is against him, the more silent and still will he be.

Asahel Nettleton, The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton pg. 372

If I might be the means of the salvation of one soul, I should prefer it to all the riches and honors of this world.

Asahel Nettleton, The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton pg. 423





Humility leads the Christian to treat others that are in fault with meekness and gentleness, as Christ did His disciples, and particularly Peter, when he had shamefully denied Him.

Jonathan Edwards, The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton pg. 371

Some elders never appreciate the compliment given them when a saint disagrees with the pastor’s exposition of a text. At least the Christian under his care is devoted more to Scripture than to the man in the pulpit. Under his ministry the child of God has reached a maturity to think through issues for himself and has imbibed a Berean spirit (Acts 17:11).

Walter J. Chantry, The Christian Ministry and Self Denial, pg 22,23

J.B. Phillips on the Early Church:
It is impossible to spend several months in close study of the remarkable short book, conventionally known as the Acts of the Apostles, without being profoundly stirred and to be honest, disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The newborn church, as vulnerable as any human child, having neither money, influence nor power in the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ. The young Church, like all young creatures, is appealing in its simplicity and single-heartedness. Here we are seeing the Church in its first youth, valiant and unspoiled — a body of ordinary men and women joined in an unconquerable fellowship never before seen on this earth.

Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this surely is the Church as it was meant to be. It is vigorous and flexible, for these are the days before it ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity or muscle-bound by over-organization. These men did not make “acts of faith,” they believed, they did not “say their prayers,” they really prayed. They did not hold conferences on psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick. But if they were uncomplicated and naive by modern standards we have ruefully to admit that they were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.

No one can read this book without being convinced that there is Someone here at work besides mere human beings. Perhaps because in their very simplicity, perhaps because of their readiness to believe, to obey, to give, to suffer, and if need be to die, the Spirit of God found what surely He must always be seeking – a fellowship of men and women so united in love and faith that He can work in them and through them with the minimum of let or hindrance. Consequently it is a matter of sober historical fact that never before has any small body of ordinary people so moved the world that their enemies could say, with tears of rage in their eyes, that these men “have turned the world upside down”! (Acts 17:6)

J.B.Phillips, The Young Church in Action

A weak and constantly accusing conscience is a spiritual liability, not a strength. Many people with especially tender consciences tend to display their overscrupulousness as if it were proof of deep spirituality. It is precisely the opposite.

John MacArthur, The Vanishing Conscience, pg. 46

Ironically, a weak conscience is more likely to accuse than a strong conscience. Scripture calls this a weak conscience because it is too easily wounded.

John MacArthur, The Vanishing Conscience, pg. 43



Samuel Medley, Hymn: Loving Kindness



Conrad Murrell

Do you want God to do something so that you can claim that it had something to do with you? With your own piety; your prayers? All that is a work of the flesh.

Paul Washer, Sermon: He Drank Your Hell

When a man is speaking to God, he is at his very acme. It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Sermon on the Mount, vol. 2, p. 46

How often do you think of heaven and rejoice when you think of it? Does it give you a sense of strangeness and of fear, a desire, as it were, to avoid it? If it does so to any degree, I fear we must plead guilty that we are living on too low a level. Thoughts of heaven ought to make us rejoice and be exceedingly glad. True Christian living is to be like Paul and to say ‘to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain’. Why? Because it means, ‘to be with Christ; which is far better,’ to see Him and to be like Him.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Sermon on the Mount, vol. 1, pp. 147, 148

The sovereignty of God is not a doctrine which appeals to the natural man. Indeed, it is repellent to him because it creates a situation which is beyond his understanding and control. Few of us take readily to the thought of surrendering our lives into the hands of another, even though that other is God. We prefer to reserve to ourselves the right of choice and thus to limit others to the right of advice. We shrink from autocracy and dogmatism, whether it is human or divine. In no aspect of life is our human foolishness more manifest than when we assume such an attitude toward God.

Henry W. Frost, Miraculous Healing, pg. 96



Charles Leiter, Providence: The Hand of God Over Everything

I have since thought that the effect of my leaving them (thirty people under conviction) as I did in the advanced stages of their conviction – was evidently beneficial. It drove them from all human dependence. Distressing as it is, and cruel as it may seem, it is necessary for them to feel that no arm but God’s can help them. Similar effects from like circumstances have heretofore been witnessed.

Asahel Nettleton, The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton pg. 120
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